this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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This is something I've been thinking about for a while, and it's a huge problem, but I don't really see a lot of discussion about it. We have the technological means now for every single person on the planet to communicate directly with every single other person, in near-real time. The only real barrier to it is logistical (and is mostly impeded by resource hoarding). That's amazing. And the recent election in Nepal via Discord has me thinking again about how the internet could form the basis for a real, democratic, world government. There are a ton of problems that would need to be addressed, off the top of my head:

  • not everyone has internet access
  • not everyone that has access has unfettered access
  • It's hard to preserve anonymity and have fair elections
  • it's hard to verify elections haven't been tampered with
  • what happens when violent crimes are committed?
  • how do taxes work in this system?
  • how do armed forces work in this system?

I don't think any of these problems are necessarily unsolvable, but I don't know how. So, how would we get from where we are to where we want to be? How do we even define what the end state should look like?

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[–] discosnails@lemmy.wtf 3 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Scan everyone's Iris, give them a forum like Reddit or Lemmy, tie the vote to their Iris scan, and create a funding mechanism like world coin to enable the transfer of value from other systems to the new system. Boom. Let people directly fund the initiatives they support, up to a certain amount of you want to avoid Citizens United type shit. By definition there will be people left out of the process, but a good version of this system would have an initiative to distribute tools to interested people without access.

[–] hisao@ani.social -4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

As a bonus: don't even ask to vote, infer what people actually want automatically, by scanning and processing all their activity by AI.

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[–] odama626@lemmy.world 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I found the book another now very insightful and it kind of touches on this

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Well don't just leave us hanging.

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[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca -1 points 4 days ago

Unironnically: Crypto, bro.

[–] arsCynic@lemmy.ml 0 points 4 days ago
  1. Scandinavian-style education everywhere.
  2. Virtue > everything else in life > profits.
  3. Only people like Marcus Aurelius in charge.
[–] FreedomAdvocate 0 points 4 days ago

A single government to preside over the whole world? It just can’t work, ever. How is a president in India supposed to govern Iraq?

[–] commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

From an objective materialist standpoint, democracies are a tool of the ruling capitalist class to legitimize its own rule and keep their position of class domination while providing an illusion to the working class that they have some sort of power in the matter (they don't, all candidates are pre-selected so all you can choose is essentially the "flavor", who ultimately gets selected usually is determined via campaign money spending and media, once they're in power they gotta preserve the state machinery and capital in place etc).

Nationalism is also a very powerful tool of capital to unite people under single unified volk, deliberately obfuscating the class that might divide said volk and it's constantly used by opportunists and conservative elements.

Given these two statements, I don't think a world government like that can even exist, or if it did it'd implode via separatism from opportunists who want to be the next "great man". US for the longest time was and still is closest to this kind of position though, but they sure as shit are never going to let foreigners vote.

[–] Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Friend. Oh boy quite the dusy you wrote there.....democracy isnt an illusion. Maybe where you are it is persumibly usa but what do i know

Seeing you are on what is typicly described as "left political spectrum" then you should know that every true "for the people" idea is base set on democracy. Socialism, anarchism, syndiclism aso.

The problem democracy has isnt democracy, which is litterly just people choosing who governce them, it is that democracy and capitalism inherently arent compatible with each other. For democracy to be 100% to its ideals everyone should be equal in all things. But that isnt possible in capitalism because threw wealth you can buy yourself influence, and a stage. So it is easier for wealthy to get a crowd. But that doesnt mean only wealthy people get elected. The many left partys in europe for example are quite the good example to disprove this.

Another problem is also the lack of education in many people which results in ignorance which results in fear and that into hate.

And in case you are in the US: big suprise the US' Freedom always came with astrixes and the "democracy" was rigged from the start. If that shocked you...you should reeally look outside and read in depth about your nations history and compare its "democratic" system to others in history, florence, venice, ditmarschen, hanseatic citys, modern democracys. Yes even the merchant democrasies and ancient democracys were more democratic than the US ever lol

To quote Kennedy "Democracy may not be the best system, but we have never needed to build walls to keep our people from leaving"

[–] commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago

I'm neither from US, neither do I consider myself as being a leftist.

When I critique democracy here, I don't critique the concept of it in general (for the records I'm 100% fine with it) but liberal democracies that dominate the world and is the status quo. It's what OP most likely means when they mention democracy in terms of world governments given the present state of things.

But that isnt possible in capitalism because threw wealth you can buy yourself influence, and a stage. So it is easier for wealthy to get a crowd. But that doesnt mean only wealthy people get elected. The many left partys in europe for example are quite the good example to disprove this.

Yeah, it doesn't - thats why media presence is as crucial as having a high campaign budget.

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[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world -4 points 5 days ago (2 children)

This sounds horrible, sorry.

We need borders because people are different with different and incompatible values. Good fences make good neighbours isn’t just a pithy saying, it’s a strong statement about the need for people to respect each other’s boundaries.

Look at the state of the US right now. It’s a horrific clash of incompatible ideologies. It would be much better for everyone involved if the US split up and people on both sides of that divide went their separate ways.

I’m at a point right now where I’m beginning to think the internet was a mistake that has undone so much progress in peace and civility. The internet accelerates divisions and allows extreme ideologies to grow and fester. It’s awful.

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

So we should just let people from harmful cultures abuse children or women?

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Because it worked out so fantastically well when the US invaded Afghanistan, right?

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 0 points 4 days ago

To play world police? Hell no.

Afghanistan was a peaceful country until Soviet influence led to a communist coup that overthrew the government in 1978. Ever since then Afghanistan has had near-endless conflict as different factions (internal and external) have wrestled for control. The Taliban itself, first known as the Mujahideen, was armed and supported by Ronald Reagan’s government.

It’s a textbook example of outsiders ruining a country’s natural course of history and development. You can find the same story in Iran, much of Central and South America, and Africa. Foreign influence creates more conflict and suffering than it prevents.

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[–] mugita_sokiovt@discuss.online -4 points 5 days ago (5 children)

For something to work like this, there would have to be a constitution that follows the Scriptures (and no, not a Catholic-infested Scriptures like an ESV, NIV, ISR2009, etc.), not the Talmud or Qur'an (for I hypothesize that those texts were written by Roman monks and/or nuns). There would be 83 laws (because there are 83 commandments that apply to us today as followers of Messiah [not Christians]), and sublaws thereof would end up being under these laws as clarifications (what us Khazars call guardrails). These laws are human-readable, period.

The governmental structure would end up, ultimately, being a meritocratic and somewhat theocratic monarchy, and the Scriptures I mentioned would be used as said law, with sublaws thereof only clarifying what defines these 83 main laws. There would be groups of leaders over millions, thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, as the Scriptures describe. On top of that, there would be no voting (because elections are selections; for they're fake, scripted, and completely unconstitutional), as we've seen in selections past.

That's all I could think of as of right now.

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[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world -1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I can't see how a global democracy would be possible without some kind of "Other" as a uniting factor for humanity.

People would always put their interests first at the expense of others.

Now, some kind of proof of Aliens or something? Extra-dimensional psychic squid like at the end of Watchmen? Maybe.

[–] oddlyqueer@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago

Genuinely, I think the "other" in this case is the extinction of the human species. It's very scary to me that there are people like Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are in charge of nuclear arsenals. Do I think they are going to start a nuclear war? At this point the best I can do is "hopefully not 🤞". But the longer we roll the nuclear armageddon dice, the better our chances that we'll eventually wipe ourselves out. And the predicament that Ukraine finds itself in currently is proof that no nation with nukes should ever give them up as long as there's a real threat of invasion by another nation. And as technology advances and we find more efficient ways of harnessing huge amounts of energy, that arms race will only escalate. I think the only long-term solution is to find a way for all of us to disarm and find a stable way to prevent rearming, or in other words, world peace.

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